Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/403

Rh mines proved very fatal. The pearl fisheries also caused much mortality. These were chiefly worked by Indians from the Bahamas, who were expert divers and able to remain long under water; but so little care was taken of the men that they gradually died off, and, as the Bahama Islands had been entirely depopulated, it was impossible to supply their places.

Of course, the cruelty experienced, from their conquerors was one among other causes of the disappearance of the Arrowauks, but if the Indians were so numerous, it would be contrary to experience that oppression alone would so soon have exterminated such a multitude, in islands of such considerable area and so inaccessible to invaders.



HE history of the United States, more than that of any other nation, is a history, not of wars and dynasties, but of the progress of a people. In the early days of British dependency the population of the thirteen original colonies comprised representatives of several diverse races, many of whom had sought the inhospitable shores of a new land to gain religious liberty, others to better their worldly condition, some under compulsion, yet all these heterogeneous elements became for a time amalgamated, animated with one desire and purpose—liberty, freedom from what they considered the unjust exactions of the English Government. This country occupies a remarkable position among the nations of the world; although its early citizens were principally of the so-called Anglo-Saxon race, yet there was among them a plentiful sprinkling of representatives from the Teutonic, Latin, and Celtic nations. Even in the days of its genesis it probably possessed a more heterogeneous population than any other country of the earth, and during the century and more of its development the foreign element has been an ever-increasing quantity among the inhabitants, until now we find that 14.77 per cent of the entire white population is foreign born, and 22.74 per cent more of foreign parentage. It is for these reasons a matter of some wonder that its historians have not paid more attention to the ethnic and racial composition of the population, and endeavored to ascertain what modifications these factors have produced.

Never have I found a finer appreciation of the true importance of the ethnic factor than in a recent article by Raoul de la Grasserie, in which occur passages translated as follows: